Word: mujahedin
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Wounding the Mujahedin...
...chilly gray dawn was just breaking over Tehran as Mousa Khiabani, 35, operational commander of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the leftist guerrilla organization seeking to overthrow the Iranian government, was moving to a new hideout. With him were his pregnant wife Azar Reza'i and Ashraf Rabi'i, the wife of Paris-based Mujahedin Leader Massoud Rajavi, and the Rajavis' year-old son. When Khiabani stepped out of his bulletproof Peugeot, a plainclothes Islamic Guard spotted him and radioed for help. Within minutes hundreds of government security forces converged on the scene...
Shooting began, and when it was over hours later, Khiabani and 21 other Mujahedin were dead. Scores of government forces were also killed or injured. According to witnesses, Khiabani's own seven-man detail of bodyguards managed to hold the government gunmen at bay until the guerrilla leader got back into the car. Another heavily armed Mujahedin squad blasted a corridor through the government forces to provide an escape route for the auto. Khiabani, though wounded, managed to drive off, but an Islamic Guard scored a direct hit on the Peugeot with a Soviet-made RPG-7 antitank rocket...
From Paris, where he has been in exile since fleeing Iran last summer with former President Abolhassan Banisadr, Rajavi acknowledged that the Mujahedin had suffered a damaging blow. But he vowed that "the battle for freedom and democracy will continue." He denied government reports of other shootouts with the Mujahedin, saying they were "useless psychological warfare." He also said he had appointed a new commander in chief, but did not divulge his name. Mujahedin sources said, however, that the new chief gave his first order the day after Khiabani's death. "Take no rash retaliatory action," he told...
Vinogradov argued that the growing discontent of fundamentalist, right-wing clergymen with Khomeini's policies, together with what he called the "CIA-backed leftists" of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (People's Crusaders), had brought Iran to the brink of a civil war. Vinogradov told Mousavi that Iran would be ripe for a U.S.-backed counterrevolution. His deal: increased Soviet protection, presumably in the form of arms and technical advisers, in exchange for a formal five-to ten-year "friendship and mutual assistance treaty" between the U.S.S.R. and Iran. The Kremlin would stand ready to defend Iran against "foreign...